I am ringing up a customer at work and it is a couple in their 50s or so buying furniture for their daughter who is moving out here to my city to go to school. They give me their phone number for a contact for the order and I notice the area code isn't from around here but up north so I ask where they are from. They reply, "Conneaut," which is a tiny little town up by Lake Erie and the border to Pennsylvania that is a few hours' drive away.
My better half is from Conneaut, and I tell them this as most folks around here have never even heard of the town so that is kind of cool!
"Oh, who are his parents?" they ask, because since they are a fair bit older than me they figure his folks would be close to their age.
"Gary and Karen H." I answered.
"Doctor Gary H.?" the man asks incredulously.
"Yes, do you know him? He's a super nice guy!" I replied.
"Know him?" the man states, "I just drove my mother to her appointment with him last week! She has been going to him for over 30 years. Why, he took out my gallbladder in '95! Wanna see the scar?"
I decline the offer, but much laughter was had at the coincidence (after the daughter got over her initial embarrassment at her dad wanting to lift his shirt up for people, haha). I shared the story with my partner when I got home and he had a good laugh, it is a small world!
Another one involving his parents- we were off to Hawai'i on my first ever airplane trip for his youngest sister's wedding. We get to the airport here in town and take the first plane to Atlanta, Georgia to find our plane has been rerouted and so instead of going to Denver and from their going out to Honolulu we now have one long plane that will take us straight there. Sitting down at the gate waiting for the plane we hear a familiar voice the next aisle over, it was his mom!
His parents had left the day before from Pittsburgh but their second flight had gotten delayed and they had spent the night in Atlanta. We had thought they were already on the beach since they'd had a day's head start! We got to spend the 10hr flight together with his parents in the row behind us, from two different cities on different days we were rerouted onto the same plane! I am unfamiliar with flying so with delays and layovers and such maybe this wasn't that strange but we were all pleasantly surprised.
A very good friend of mine and I met through a meditation circle held by a mutual acquaintance. We both decided that after a few meetings and a falling out from both of us to that acquaintance (due to some at-first hidden prejudices by her and a few other members), we would be more comfortable starting our own group together with people we had more in common with spiritually and who weren't racist asshats- and so we branched out and started a new group.
We have been very close and like sisters for over a year, and have only recently discovered that the woman who had separately and at completely different times (my friend had started going to the original meetings sooner than I had) who had asked and encouraged us each to go to our first meditation group was a woman who she and I had both previously worked with in our two very separate fields,who had somehow always been absent from our monthly meetings because of some reason or another so we hadn't even known that we each even knew her!
